ROME: Italy’s far-right League party intervened on Sunday to block efforts by a Muslim association to turn a former hospital chapel into a mosque.

The Muslim group last week made the highest offer for the chapel in the northern city of Bergamo at an auction organised by a local hospital, outbidding the Romanian Orthodox Church which had been using the building for its religious services.

But the project proved short-lived, with League leaders in the wealthy Lombardy region, which includes Bergamo, announcing they would halt the sale by using a 2004 law that enables them to intervene and safeguard cultural sites.

“I would never put a Church on sale and I am amazed that the hospital management did not realise what a sensitive issue this is,” Lombardy President Attilio Fontana, a League politician, wrote on Twitter.

“However, we will exercise our right of first refusal (for the sale) and there will be no space for any appeal,” he added. His decision means the region must now buy the property.

League leader Matteo Salvini warned earlier this year that Italian culture and society risked being eradicated by Islam.

“Centuries of history risk disappearing if Islamisation, which up until now has been underestimated, gains the upper hand,” he said in a statement.

Muslims only represent a small minority in Roman Catholic Italy, with the Pew Research Centre saying they will make up 4.9 per cent of the population by 2020 aga­inst 3.7 per cent in 2010.

Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2018

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